


A Little Chat

by birdzilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Kink Meme, Shovel Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Allura and Shiro start exploring their relationship, Coran decides it's time to take Shiro aside for a private talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Chat

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to [a prompt](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?thread=229513#cmt229513) on the Voltron kink meme. The original prompter requested an overprotective Coran giving a shovel talk; I went a little abroad of the prompt in my eagerness to spill some of my Coran headcanons, but the shovel bit is still in there. I've made some minor edits and expansions to the text posted here.

Today had been a good day, by Shiro's reckoning. They had destroyed a Galra base in an isolated system that nonetheless would have a significant impact on four different fleets' supply lines, and then they'd found that one of the planets in the system was a verdant, peaceful garden world blossoming with life. Given the success of today's mission, Shiro had immediately authorized a brief landing so that the paladins could get some R&R.

While he was keeping an eye on their perimeter, Shiro couldn't deny that he'd fallen under the planet's spell too. They'd landed amid rolling hills, topped with copses of elegant, golden-leaved trees and strewn with beautiful blue and white flowers amid the low yellow-green grass. Lance, Coran, and Pidge had vanished into the trees to chase some kind of finned monkey that Coran said had the markers of a potential intelligent species, Hunk was analyzing the local fruit, Keith had found a book and a secluded spot to read it, and Shiro was sitting on a hilltop, leaning against a tree-trunk, watching Allura pick flowers.

With no one around to comment on his absorption, Shiro was able to unabashedly enjoy watching her. Her skirt and hair both swirled around her as she knelt, rose, and turned from flower to flower, and sometimes she pursed her lips thoughtfully and gave a flower a long, considering look before either adding it to her bundle or leaving it alone. He could hear snatches of humming when she wandered close enough him. And whenever she stood up from choosing a flower, she looked up at him and gave him a brilliant smile. Shiro smiled back, ears burning, and hoped that he didn't look too embarrassingly enamoured.

Arms around a sizeable bouquet, Allura finally gave off adding flowers and came back up the hill to sit down by Shiro, her flowers in her lap. "Shiro, look," she said, separating a few of them out. "I'd thought these were different kinds of flowers, but they must be different cultivars of the same species. There's some in here that have both blue and white petals, from where they've cross-pollinated."

Shiro took the one she was holding out to him and looked at it, turning it carefully over to see the pattern both top and bottom. "It's beautiful," he told her, winning another smile. Feeling greatly daring, he leaned forward and tucked it into her hair, just above her hair. "Just like you are."

For a second, Allura looked taken aback, and Shiro felt his stomach drop. But then she laughed, picked up another of the variegated flowers, and stuck it behind Shiro's ear. "It suits you, too."

His face went hot, and Shiro hoped he didn't look too silly, but he grinned at her anyway. "Does it match my hair?" he joked, tilting his head a little to model the flower for her.

"Perfectly," Allura said, all earnestness.

Over her shoulder, he could see Lance and Pidge descending from the branches of another copse in the distance. Coran stepped out from amid the trees, standing as if he was giving a lecture, and Shiro raised a hand to acknowledge all three. Pidge waved back, and Coran looked at them over his shoulder.

Allura twisted around to wave as well. Then she turned back and gathered up the rest of the flowers in her lap, pausing to shuffle them a bit so even the mono-colored ones were mixed together in a medley of white and blue, and held the whole bouquet out to him. "On Altea," she said, hesitant, "offering flowers to someone else was a symbolic gesture. It meant that you feel very strongly about them, and you'd like to... explore that further. I don't know if you have anything like that on Earth, but-"

"We do," Shiro said, feeling his heart flip over in his chest, and reached out to take the flowers from her. "It's usually men giving them to women, but it means the same thing. I, uh. I'd also like to explore that, uh, further."

Allura breathed out a sigh and beamed at him, her ears lifting and her eyes lighting up. "Then let us begin," she suggested, and leaned in to kiss him.

Shiro didn't even consider that they might still be in sight of the others until much later, and by the time he thought of it and looked up, they had vanished again into the trees.

***

He'd forgotten about the bouquet by the time they were ready to go back to the castle, but when he and Allura stood, she caught them before they could tumble out of his lap. They walked back hand-in-hand until they reached the entrance, where the others were waiting, and Shiro discreetly let go. He wasn't sure he wanted to broadcast their _exploring_ to the rest of the paladins quite yet.

"Nice flower, Shiro," Pidge said, smirking at the bloom behind his ear. Shiro tried the same quelling look he usually used with Lance, but it didn't seem to have quite the same effect.

Fortunately he was spared any further commentary by Hunk, arriving with his arms overflowing with fruit. "This planet has great fruit! I have big plans for dessert tonight," he said. A teetering yellow fruit tumbled from atop the pile to hit the floor beside him and roll away, and he hunched his shoulders sheepishly. "But I could use some help here."

Lance, Pidge, and Keith all fixated on him, rushing to take some of his precariously-balanced load before it fell and bruised on the castle's hard floors. Shiro's mouth watered just at the sight of the brightly-colored rinds and skins; he might not have a teenager's appetite anymore, but he wasn't immune to the effects of a regular diet of food goo. Before he could step forward to take his own share, though, a firm hand landed on his shoulder.

"Why don't you all go on and start on dinner," Coran said, steering Shiro forcibly towards the nearest door. "No, Allura, you too. Shiro and I have a few things to go over in the, ah, back storage corridor over here."

Racking his brain, Shiro tried to think of what Coran might want to talk about. They'd discussed a few possible follow-up targets for their next mission before they'd landed here, but he'd thought Coran had been determined to get detailed scans of those monkeys, so he hadn't expected any follow-up on that yet. If there was something going on with the castle, surely Coran would want Allura in on the conversation. Maybe he wanted to bring something up in private about one of the other paladins?

Shiro wasn't trying to resist Coran's direction, but there was still quite a bit of force behind Coran's hand as he pushed Shiro through the door and started walking him down the storage corridor. The lights here were smaller and dimmer than they were in the ship's main passageways, and between them were vast blank stretches of metal wall, interrupted regularly by doors marked with Altaen glyphs. Shiro glanced at a few doors as they passed.

"What did you need?" he asked Coran.

"Did you know, I actually knew Allura's mother before I ever met King Alfor?" Coran said, as if he hadn't heard the question. When Shiro looked at him, he had a far-away look on his face, but he noticed Shiro's gaze and cast him a sideways glance that wasn't distant at all. "A wonderful woman. Beautiful, brilliant, dedicated--we were in the cadet corps together. Worked on the same project during our nano-weaponry training, in fact. What she could do with those clever little things! She came up with a program that, with the right biological data, could alter nanobot swarms to cause uncontrollable allergic reactions in just about any species. Non-deadly but debilitating, and very annoying--perfect for psychological warfare. I believe I have some of those in storage somewhere around here."

That didn't sound very useful against the Galra, but Shiro was willing to see if Coran had more to the idea. "Is that-"

"A very determined woman," Coran went on, talking relentlessly over Shiro. "She browbeat me into introducing her to Prince Alfor within a month after my grandfather presented me to the royal family. Allura gets her determination from her mother. Takes after her quite a lot."

Or maybe they weren't back here to talk about nanobots. Shiro glanced down at the bouquet of flowers he'd been carrying at his side. "Allura hasn't really talked about her mother."

"Well, no, she never saw much of her. The Princess-Consort was a general by the time Allura was born. In charge of research and development, always off overseeing labs and test deployments and wrangling about budgets. King Alfor was the one who looked after Allura. And thank goodness for that. If she was half as reckless as her mother-" Coran shook his head. "But I had a hand in raising her too, of course. You need more than one role model for any child, never mind a royal one!"

"Did you work for King Alfor by then?" Shiro asked. He wasn't quite sure where this was going, yet, but he had his suspicions.

"Well, I worked for the royal family. It's not like being in the military, you know--one role, with a nice tidy chain of command. The Altaen royal family's retainers swear themselves to the royal family, not to individuals. I had all sorts of duties to the whole family. But Prince Alfor's mother said that since I shared the responsibility for helping conceive her--she never did like the Princess-Consort much--I should share the responsibility for helping raise her. I was Allura's first tutor when she was a child. Reading, writing, bio-energy flows, a spot of engineering... the basics. And then of course I was one of King Alfor's advisors once he took the throne, so I kept up with her education. She always came to me first when she had a question King Alfor couldn't answer for her." Coran's eyes shone, and his chest puffed up with pride. "It's quite a feeling, having a child look up to you like that! Rather made me wish- ah, well."

Coran stopped in the hallway, midway between two far-off light fixtures. With Coran's hand still heavy on his shoulder, Shiro perforce stopped as well. Coran turned towards him and swung him in so they were face-to-face. Even having encountered the surprising Altaen strength before, Shiro was surprised by the solidity of Coran's grip; it didn't squeeze hard enough to be painful, but there was a firmness and tension in the hard hand that suggested that if Shiro resisted, it could easily turn his shoulder to a pulp.

"The Princess is very important to me, Shiro," Coran said. His face was set and serious, and his eyes hard, in a way that Shiro had only half-glimpsed once or twice before behind Coran's glib good humor. Shiro thought this might have been the face Coran had worn when King Alfor asked him to go into cryosleep alongside his daughter. "And not just as the Princess. Though I am loyal to the royal family, of course. Princess Allura was King Alfor's greatest treasure, and the Queen-General's proudest accomplishment, and my own most precious student. She is as important to me as any of my children would have been, if I had been that fortunate."

"I know," Shiro said, straightening his back and meeting Coran's eyes. He could tell where this was going now, and he just hoped that it didn't end with his shoulder out of alignment in order to make Coran's point. He could be a bit heedless at times when he was fired up.

"I want nothing more than for Princess Allura to be happy," Coran said. He laid his other hand on Shiro's other shoulder, still not squeezing, still gripping with an inexorable firmness. "You have a noble spirit, Shiro, and I don't have any objections so long as she's happy with you. Not that I could stop Allura from doing anything she wanted to do. But I want you to know that if you ever get it into your head to do something foolish and hurt her, or put her in danger-" _now_ Coran's hands tightened, just for a moment, thumbs pressing into the meat just below the joint until Shiro couldn't help but tense in response "-I want to remind you that I am here in this castle to watch out for her. And if you hurt the princess, nanobot allergens will be the least of your worries."

There was a bit of a lilt in his voice for the last line, as if to make light of the threat implied, but the gleam in Coran's eyes right then was anything but humorous. Shiro was reminded that this was a man who had driven the castle right into the heart of the gathered Galra fleets, just to break open a window for them to rescue the Princess.

"I promise you, I don't have any intention of hurting Allura," Shiro said. He brought the bouquet up without thinking, holding it across his chest like he was making a vow upon it, and Coran gave him a tiny, inscrutable nod at the sight. "And I would never do anything to endanger her. Though I can't control whether she decides to put herself in danger, and I wouldn't try to."

Coran gave a little sigh, then let Shiro go, with a final slap on both shoulders that Shiro had to brace himself against to keep from stumbling. "Well, given the Princess, I can't ask for more," he said. "But I expect you to watch out for her! And I'll be keeping an eye on you both. Now, let's find you a vase for those flowers," he said in abrupt segue, clapping his hands together and starting down the corridor. "I'm sure we can find you something suitable for an Earthling arrangement."

"Arrangement?" Shiro echoed, following Coran.

"The flower arrangement to display your feelings with," Coran said. "I'm sure Princess Allura will enjoy seeing what variations humans use. You'll have to explain your symbolism to her, but I've always felt that's the best approach even with traditional arrangements. You'd be surprised how much trouble some regional differences were on Altea! You'll want a yellow vase for blue flowers--unless you'd prefer orange...."

He was definitely, Shiro thought, a lot more that he was going to have to learn if his explorations with Allura were going to bear fruit. But maybe now he could count on Coran as a native guide.


End file.
